“Black Susy,” he shouted, and began to run.
“Take me with you,” she gasped, laughing. “You forget that henceforth there are two of us.”
He seized her hand, and so they stepped before the faithful monster that was keeping watch on the road.
“Dear creature,” he said, and stroked the sooty boiler, and as they went on he looked back at her every three steps as if he could not part with her.
“I have watched over her well,” said Elsbeth; “she generally stands underneath my window, for we have purchased the whole of your father’s inheritance that nothing should be lost to you.”
When they approached the opposite edge of the wood, he said, pointing to two trees which stood twenty steps away from the road.
“Here is the place where I found you lying in your hammock.”
“Yes,” she said, “it was there, too, that I found out for the first time that I should never be able to do without you.”
“And there is the juniper-tree,” he continued, when they stepped out into the fields, “where we—” and then he suddenly cried aloud, and stretched out both his hands into space.
“What is the matter?” she exclaimed, anxiously, looking up at him. He had turned deathly pale and his lips quivered.